"I don't know, he just keeps saying he's the 'firestarter'. Hold on he's coming back...He won't stand still for two seconds. He's probably spaced up on yellow jackets from the look of him. I am trapped in a sewer with a confessed arsonist, Brock!! HELP ME!!"

I always thought it was curious Stephen King abandoned The Shop pretty early in his writing career as it was one of his first cross-over concepts. I don't even recall them getting a mention in The Dark Tower series but I could be wrong about that. Maybe he just thought it was dumb one day.

It really wasn't much different than an evil X-Files or even SHIELD these days though. They could do something with that concept I guess.

Confabulat:I always thought it was curious Stephen King abandoned The Shop pretty early in his writing career as it was one of his first cross-over concepts. I don't even recall them getting a mention in The Dark Tower series but I could be wrong about that. Maybe he just thought it was dumb one day.

It really wasn't much different than an evil X-Files or even SHIELD these days though. They could do something with that concept I guess.

I think it was about the time he went off into "paid by the word" world (see Thinner, It, etc.)

/it has some good serial elements and plot lines that are still relevant//conspiracy never gets old

I remember the book being anticlimactic as all hell, since the protagonist was a walking apocalypse that made The Stand's plot look like a couple children catching the flu, had essentially none of the control necessary to prevent the entire planet being crisped, and the story just kinda stopped with no explanation for why literally everyone in the universe hadn't died screaming.

Sort of "the andromeda strain" of creepy psychic asshole children stories.

Mad_Radhu:"I don't know, he just keeps saying he's the 'firestarter'. Hold on he's coming back...He won't stand still for two seconds. He's probably spaced up on yellow jackets from the look of him. I am trapped in a sewer with a confessed arsonist, Brock!! HELP ME!!"

I coworker sang at a local bar for open mike night they other day, and since I was nearby I stopped in to give a little moral support.

All the kids singing were 25 ish and fark if I didn't hear 4 non blondes, Edie Brickell, Alanis Morrisette and everything else I never needed to here again since 1994.

Oddly enough the coworker was a black kid who looks like Michael from Good Times, played a Mandolin and sang Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.

MaudlinMutantMollusk:Confabulat: I always thought it was curious Stephen King abandoned The Shop pretty early in his writing career as it was one of his first cross-over concepts. I don't even recall them getting a mention in The Dark Tower series but I could be wrong about that. Maybe he just thought it was dumb one day.

It really wasn't much different than an evil X-Files or even SHIELD these days though. They could do something with that concept I guess.

I think it was about the time he went off into "paid by the word" world (see Thinner, It, etc.)

/it has some good serial elements and plot lines that are still relevant//conspiracy never gets old

I wondered why he didn't have slightly older versions of Charlene "Charlie" McGee and Daniel "Danny" Torrance (and perhaps Carrietta N. "Carrie" White as well ― yes, she died in her novel, but that didn't stop other characters from crossing over into The Dark Tower series) as Breakers. The Shop could easily have been another incarnation of the Crimson King's enterprises in various Earths (e.g. North Central Positronics, the Sombra Corporation, etc.), perhaps the minions of the Crimson King experimenting with a shadowy government agency instead of a corporation per se in that world as a means of creating and/or recruiting Breakers.

I read Firestarter for the first time recently, and the Rolling Stone ending took a moment to set in. I blinked, i squirmed, i knitted my brows in a vain attempt to understand the situation... and then i thought... oh, yeah. The Counterculture. That thing.

I wondered why he didn't have slightly older versions of Charlene "Charlie" McGee and Daniel "Danny" Torrance (and perhaps Carrietta N. "Carrie" White as well ― yes, she died in her novel, but that didn't stop other characters from crossing over into The Dark Tower series) as Breakers. The Shop could easily have been another incarnation of the Crimson King's enterprises in various Earths

I'd rather that someone remake the original movie and update it for modern times before going miniseries.

Honestly, the timeline is about perfect if they add in a generation between the original 1960's experiements and a little girl grandchild living today. The original subjects could have shown little or no abilities, and the next gen could have been moderately powered studied, then killed except for the McGees who escape and go into hiding and then Charlie could be the third gen wildcard.

Confabulat:Jim_Callahan: the story just kinda stopped with no explanation for why literally everyone in the universe hadn't died screaming.

The climax of the story is something that only makes sense in the semi-rebellious spirit of that particular time. In a modern context, it makes no sense at all.

SPOILER ALERT

It ends with Charlie escaping, but there's no hope, because The Shop controls everything anyway, where can she run? Not like she can go to the New York Times or the police.

So the final paragraph has her showing up at the office of Rolling Stone.

At some point in American history, this actually made sense.

Actually it still kind of does. Rolling Stone sucks in regards to music journalism now, but they are still great at the in-depth investigative stuff. Matt Taibbi, for example, does some excellent investigative work on politics and banking. It's about the only thing that still makes the magazine worth reading.

I wasn't saying that this would necessarily have been better. I was merely wondering why he didn't do, even as a casual mention of the names of two or three Breakers and perhaps with a short mention of some human or Low Men agents of The Shop at Blue Heaven or the Dixie Pig, given how easily those stories could've been force-fit into it as well as how readily he retrofitted other stories into the Towerverse with much less justification. I mean, for Pete's sake, he had Father Callahan of Salem's Lot as a major character! And here he had these three powerful psychic youth in his early novels (one predating, the other two post-dating the aforementioned Salem's Lot), and he doesn't use them in a part of the story focusing on the Crimson King agents capturing and exploiting powerful psychics as a weapon to destroy the omniverse!?

Agreed about the last three novels taking a serious downturn in quality. One wonders what they would've been had King not been hit by that van. It seems that he largely ruined his magnum opus in an attempt to have us all share in his self-prescribed therapy for coming to grips with that.

/I am so stealing "Good godparticle"! If only Congress hadn't shelved the Superconducting Supercollider! But that'd be a threadjack.

Confabulat:I always thought it was curious Stephen King abandoned The Shop pretty early in his writing career as it was one of his first cross-over concepts. I don't even recall them getting a mention in The Dark Tower series but I could be wrong about that. Maybe he just thought it was dumb one day.

It really wasn't much different than an evil X-Files or even SHIELD these days though. They could do something with that concept I guess.

They showed up in The Tommyknockers, which I recall SK said he wrote during a low (ie coke and booze) period of his life.

I always hoped King would write a story in which the grown-up Carrie White (not dead after all), Charlie McGee, Danny Torrence, and Ellen Creed were captured and brainwashed by The Shop to be supernatural agents that seek out other "special" people for the Shop to capture and study.

Their handler? John Rainbird, who turned out to be a werewolf and was thus not killed by Charlie's attack.

Nix Nightbird:I always hoped King would write a story in which the grown-up Carrie White (not dead after all), Charlie McGee, Danny Torrence, and Ellen Creed were captured and brainwashed by The Shop to be supernatural agents that seek out other "special" people for the Shop to capture and study.

Their handler? John Rainbird, who turned out to be a werewolf and was thus not killed by Charlie's attack.

Did you mean Eileen ("Ellie") Creed? I never read nor saw Pet Sematary so I was unaware of her.

Your idea is intriguing, but I still wonder why King didn't make them all Breakers, and The Shop a government agency analogue to North Central Positronics and the Sombra Corporation.

CptnSpldng:Tom_Slick: Since they are pitching series in a Stephen King universe, I want a series based on Needful Things. Follow Leland Gaunt as he brings chaos to small towns and villages around the world.